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New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty was not pleased with part of AG Eliot Spitzer’s debate performance last night – the part when he said he not only favors capital punishment for cop killers and terrorists, but would sign a bill to reinstate it if he’s elected governor.

What Spitzer said was: “There will be a bill that will be introduced, and one that will be signed.”

I interpreted his statement to mean that if the Legislature didn’t send him a bill, he would take matters into his own hands. But he also said reinstating the death penalty hasn’t been at the top of his priority list, even though he campaigned hard on this issue during his first unsuccessful AG run in 1994, so this point seems to be up for debate.

The opening line of the New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty statement is quite telling:

We were disappointed to hear Attorney General Spitzer say during the gubernatorial debate that, as Governor, he is prepared to sign a death penalty statute if passed by the Legislature. We know him as a person who understands the fallibility and shortcomings of the criminal justice system. He was a founding member of New Yorkers for Fairness in Capital Punishment, which was rebuffed in its attempts to shape the 1995 capital punishment statute that eventually died in the Court of Appeals because of its unfairness and unconstitutional defects.

Last I heard, there was still a primary and a general election yet to be held…

In closing, the statement concludes that the death penalty is a “flawed response to crime,” which is “unworkable, expensive, too fraught with mistakes resulting in wrongful convictions and too often imposed in a biased way.”

That is why growing majorities of New Yorkers now support life without parole as the preferred maximum sentence for those convicted of the most serious crimes. New Yorkers have learned that. New York Assemblymembers have learned that. We hope Attorney General Spitzer comes to see as well that we can live without the death penalty.

The state’s highest court ruled New York’s death penalty law unconstitutional in June 2004.

The likelihood of a death penalty “fix” passing the state Legislature at this point is pretty low. The Assembly Codes Committee, led by Assemblyman Joe Lentol, D-Brooklyn, has kept the measure from coming to the floor for a full house vote.

But if Spitzer made this a priority – particularly in his first year in office when his power as a new governor (if elected) would be at its height – things might change.

Interestingly, Spitzer’s position on the death penalty not only puts him at odds with his own running mate, Seante Minority Leader David Paterson, D-Harlem, but also with Democratic AG front-runner Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo is a founding partner of Network for Justice, an anti-death penalty cyber movement that is allied with New Yorkers Agasinst the Death Penalty.Â

Cuomo’s father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, kept the death penalty from being reinstated during his watch and was angered by the Democrats’ willingness to go along with it for the man who ousted him, Gov. George Pataki, who also ran on a pro-death penalty platform in 1994.

As promised, Pataki successfully pushed through a measure to reinstate the death penaltyÂ during his first year in office inÂ 1995, but between then and June 2004, not a single person was put to death in New York.

(For the record: New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty is a 501c3 nonprofit and thus is not endorsing any candidate in this race or any other).

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